Guild Wars 2

First, let me apologize that I am unable to view enough similar forum threads of similar (or not) suggestions for how to make healing power or healing in general, better/different.

I’d like to open up with that some people still insist or try to make 100% healer role play styles. I understand that that is not possible and its best to mix tactics and stats around for better to best results.
However, event and combat credit for those that try to stay off to the side flinging support (healing, buffs, and non damage related effects) grow disappointed that they do not get that participation check, or if they do, its not frequent enough to be noticed. This is 50% hearsay, 50% myself.

Lets look at healing power itself. In most respects, its exactly as power, only applies to just healing related skills. In a lesser aspect, skills have fairly low ratios, specially over time effects even though that is justified. When one person tries to heal self, and this is his or her first time playing, he expects the self heal to recover 75% of thier hp in dangerous situations and take 30 seconds to repeat. What currently happens is a 40% hp heal with very wide range of downtimes from 15 seconds to 45 OR a 80% heal over 3 to 6 seconds on a 40 to 60 seconds recharge.

Next lets look at synergy stats. Toughness is favored for defensive importance and role, its a no brainer and it works together with healing power and vitality for increasing survival balancedly. However, healing cannot crit so precision and ferocity is limited to just damage. Then vitality doesn’t quite work in healing’s favor, more health TO heal after all, which would be fine if it wasn’t hard to “catch up” to begin with.

Effect stacking is my final topic, there’s a comfortable amount of mixing around we can do… except for conditions but i have trouble keeping up with news and thats a completely different topic. A single guardian or elementalist fully dedicated on healing, can only at most heal 7% hp/second with combined sum of effects towards others. Less if passive and hearsay a bit more if active. I do not remember if those mentioning active combined healing took in account for cooldowns or not. I do know that the strongest single AoE utility or trait sourced heals recover about 4000 health to self (or 7000 to others) under maximum conditions.

[Gentle] Solutions, at least two out of following would help:

• A heal in a certain area count as hitting mobs towards participation credit. If this already happens, then its unoticable for most people that have been complaining or battles are too fast (blame those that stick to “zerkers”).
• Enable healing to crit. This sounds strong but its nothing compared to some more zealous suggestions i’ve heard. Just grant half benefit of precision and fero, for balance related comfort.
• Give everyone 10% vitality added to healing power, or 5% power and vitality is added to healing power. Why am I suggesting this? To give more stat spreading comfort and to help healing “catch up”, all while at same time being very small (max from vit is 270 rounded up from this alone).
• Increase all healing over time/trigger by 1%, all utility/trait based healing that can affect others by 5%, and self heals by 10%. (most likely lesser degree for final mention).

[Extreme] Solutions :

• Remove ferocity and in its place give crit related stat for healing that isn’t over time (such as healing signet or regeneration boon). This would require a lot of work merging effects such as half of precision is old fero, and new fero is just a copy of precision in effects but for healing.
• Add half of player’s level to a multiplier for all healing. I’m not sure where this came from but sounds kind of high, reason its in this category.
• Double all healing, this isn’t happening but its what i heard asked.
• Remove healing power and use power for increasing healing effects. I can see where this is coming from but it breaks too many things, yet it’ll simply a lot in both good and bad ways.

The problem with healing in my opinion is there are 2 types of healers.

I will use gw1 for an example (though not to say gw2 should be like gw1 but this is an example of using healers). In gw1 you would normally have 2 full healers in a party of 8. 1 for direct healing and the other for protection healing. It doesn’t matter how much you can direct heal if people are dieing in 1 hit because they don’t have damage reduction/protection spirit (only take 10% of hp in a hit) etc etc.

Now back to gw2 assuming you want to be a healer, I think this is the problem. Healing only affects your direct healing (and it is weak at that). Protection (if you can apply it) gives 33% reduction which is great, but most the time is not anywhere near enough to keep up with the damage from many normal mob hits let alone most boss attacks. If there was some way to let classes trait for protective healing (gives x% damage reduction that stacks with protection) with certain skills that scales off healing power I think purely healing builds may be viable. Allowing the option of a protection heal and a direct heal is something that might allow for changes. Plus healing doesn’t affect much at this point, if it gave an extra damage reduction (with certain skills of course) to classes it would potentially make it a more used stat.

I am not for or against a trinity, but some people really enjoy playing the healer role. If you made it so you can have a healer/protection player that is actually helpful/useful but not required I am all for it. Given the harder pve content we have now, dungeons/fractals its all so easy.. healers aren’t needed in the least, but being able to be one for fun occasionally and actually make a difference would be a welcome change in my book.

I’m pretty much afk auto attacking Grenth while piles of corpse lies around me.

I’m pretty sure healing power/toughness/vitality really boost your survivability.

The problem is speed run is pretty much the standard today. If you can’t clear the dungeon in full berserker max dps build, you get frowned on.

The only thing that is stopping hard support from being really powerful in PvE is the lack of substantial +outgoing healing modifiers (32.50% excluding AB from the ele water line is what we have now).

Otherwise it is not foreign for even a casual average groups of 1 hard supprt + 4 dps to clear fotm50 in less than 35 minutes even with longer fractals in the mix.

The problem with Healing Power is that it only affects direct healing, which is a fairly minor component of the overall Support role. Zerker is meta because you can completely ignore the Healing Power attribute and still provide a huge amount of support to your party.

I’ve made this suggestion before but I’d like to see Healing Power be renamed to Boon Power and have it affect Might, Retaliation, Protection and Regeneration (and have the baseline values for these boons nerfed accordingly). Not only would this provide a nice symmetry with the condition attribute pair, it could potentially give players who prefer a supportive playstyle a place in the meta.

Granted, with dungeons the way they currently are I wouldn’t expect anything more than 4 zerkers and 1 zerker ele with a zealot set on swap, but even a small amount of gear diversity would a big deal given the unapproachable efficiency of zerker at the moment.

They should just axe healing power and all associated armor sets as all the modifiers/coefficients are too small to be with investing in it as a stat.

Personally, I love what kronos is hinting towards. I want something that’ll let healing or general support rolls to not need to fall back on the “you can do that the same but in zerkers for better damage”.

We actually don’t have much “reactive” healing either. Vamp signet and defiant stance are only notable two i can think of at 5am. Some rune sets provide this i believe. As well as heal on block (via aegis). I enjoy aegis based guardian but aside from “aegis bomb” there’s no where that’s going, i can perform better via constant protection symbol hammer or heal spam mace/staff + symbol… and that falls short the moment i face 4+ foes or an elite (but strangely fine vs 1 or 2 vets).

I’m trying my best not to be… excessive with suggestions, but most people want something large and I prefer to be an intermediary. I dream of using a utility based heal (such as mesmer mantra heal on prep) to heal 20% of someone’s hp who has full exotic celestial stats. That’ll make me feel like i’m doing something, except that specific skill is NOT a good candidate for buffing, its painfully easy to use even though the drawback is that you give up scepter auto attack (! ) or something else similar.

laokoko.7403:

I’m pretty much afk auto attacking Grenth while piles of corpse lies around me.

I’m pretty sure healing power/toughness/vitality really boost your survivability.

The problem is speed run is pretty much the standard today. If you can’t clear the dungeon in full berserker max dps build, you get frowned on.

So many people complain about “those zerker elitists in dungeons” I wonder why can’t you play with each other and avoid those so called speed runners?

I would love it. As someone who stubbornly runs cleric with bit of soldier’s Necro with Dwayna runes, apothecary Engineer, buff machine Guard and somehow trying to figure out water attunement on my new Ele, (although I love the Necro to bits, just want a small break), I am pretty rare sight… I don’t have problems tagging though (Necro staff is good when I cannot simply d/f), and truly, as pointed up above, i often stand among a pile of corpses wondering what just happened

tramwajarz.2369:

laokoko.7403:

I’m pretty much afk auto attacking Grenth while piles of corpse lies around me.

I’m pretty sure healing power/toughness/vitality really boost your survivability.

The problem is speed run is pretty much the standard today. If you can’t clear the dungeon in full berserker max dps build, you get frowned on.

So many people complain about “those zerker elitists in dungeons” I wonder why can’t you play with each other and avoid those so called speed runners?

we usually do – that doesn’t mean I wasn’t told off by random people for not being the almighty meta

Um Abbas.5693:

tramwajarz.2369:

laokoko.7403:

I’m pretty much afk auto attacking Grenth while piles of corpse lies around me.

I’m pretty sure healing power/toughness/vitality really boost your survivability.

The problem is speed run is pretty much the standard today. If you can’t clear the dungeon in full berserker max dps build, you get frowned on.

So many people complain about “those zerker elitists in dungeons” I wonder why can’t you play with each other and avoid those so called speed runners?

we usually do – that doesn’t mean I wasn’t told off by random people for not being the almighty meta

I was told off by random people for being meta. Point?

Um Abbas.5693:

tramwajarz.2369:

laokoko.7403:

I’m pretty much afk auto attacking Grenth while piles of corpse lies around me.

I’m pretty sure healing power/toughness/vitality really boost your survivability.

The problem is speed run is pretty much the standard today. If you can’t clear the dungeon in full berserker max dps build, you get frowned on.

So many people complain about “those zerker elitists in dungeons” I wonder why can’t you play with each other and avoid those so called speed runners?

we usually do – that doesn’t mean I wasn’t told off by random people for not being the almighty meta

doesn´t mean they are wrong though either.

The problem is not with healing power. The problem is with how events are designed and rewarded. Most, if not all events, can be done by 100% zerker builds, and reward zerker builds more readily than healing builds. When there is no real reason to have healers in events, and when you reward them less, people are less likely to want to go the healer route.

Healing builds do work, and they do help your team, but they simply aren’t rewarding enough and in the open work or speed run meta, they simply aren’t needed. So it wouldn’t matter how much you buffed healing, if a full team of zerkers can do anything faster and for better rewards, what is the point in going support?

Anet needs to fix events and reward systems, to make healing and support builds more attractive and more necessary. Otherwise they will only ever be used by those who enjoy the playstyle, regardless of the negatives.

Rin.1046:

The problem is not with healing power. The problem is with how events are designed and rewarded. Most, if not all events, can be done by 100% zerker builds, and reward zerker builds more readily than healing builds. When there is no real reason to have healers in events, and when you reward them less, people are less likely to want to go the healer route.

Healing builds do work, and they do help your team, but they simply aren’t rewarding enough and in the open work or speed run meta, they simply aren’t needed. So it wouldn’t matter how much you buffed healing, if a full team of zerkers can do anything faster and for better rewards, what is the point in going support?

Anet needs to fix events and reward systems, to make healing and support builds more attractive and more necessary. Otherwise they will only ever be used by those who enjoy the playstyle, regardless of the negatives.

What’s headscratchy about the events you talk about is that the system tracks your outgoing healing, how much damage you mitigate on other players, how much you buff other players’ damage, and still does nothing to reward healers who save a group from wiping, just because that person didn’t tag the monster/event. Even if said person was often the target of most monsters.

Making healing power more potent would be very bad for PvP balance imo. Cele builds such as DD Ele and Shout Warrior would be OP as hell and they are hard to kill already.

The reasons I see as to why healing builds are not a thing in PvE (generally speaking oc, you can use whatever gear you want and complete any content currently in the game) are…
a) it is simply not needed (every class has a self heal and lots of different ways of damage mitigation)
b) it often wont save you anyways in sticky situations (if you want passive defense, toughness with its flat damage reduction is a way superior choice)
c) it doesn´t affect res speed or something along those lines (if you go down, rallying by killing something is safer and faster in most situations)
d) it scales horribly

However, if you REALLY want to run a healing build and still contribute to a fight by dealing meaningful amounts of damage, I´d recommend you craft yourself some Zealot´s gear (+power, +precision, +healing power).

Arenanet could design certain encounters where the players have to heal NPCs and have to apply boons to them – be it a boss/several ones, totems etc. Since the targets are not players the scaling for healing power could be totally different and would not influence PvP or WvW.

Healing Power work perfectly. It’s not the fastest way, but the easiest.

They are only 3, one of them is a healing guardian and they are still able to do fractal in a decent time. The run was just easier with an cleric guardian.

Belenwyn.8674:

Arenanet could design certain encounters where the players have to heal NPCs and have to apply boons to them – be it a boss/several ones, totems etc. Since the targets are not players the scaling for healing power could be totally different and would not influence PvP or WvW.

both aoe dps and healing skills have mostly a cap to 5 target. Now, in zerg situation, how can you make game not to prioritize players over npcs or move 50 players away from your range?

Everybody is a healer with skill number 6. What we need is that ppl finally learn how this game works. No healer here. Play according to game rules, not against it.

tramwajarz.2369:

Belenwyn.8674:

Arenanet could design certain encounters where the players have to heal NPCs and have to apply boons to them – be it a boss/several ones, totems etc. Since the targets are not players the scaling for healing power could be totally different and would not influence PvP or WvW.

both aoe dps and healing skills have mostly a cap to 5 target. Now, in zerg situation, how can you make game not to prioritize players over npcs or move 50 players away from your range?

Everybody is a healer with skill number 6. What we need is that ppl finally learn how this game works. No healer here. Play according to game rules, not against it.

You are right for open world encounters it would require a bigger adjustment. For instanced encounters the implementation would be quite easy.

We already have instanced events where you need to keep npc alive. I don’t see a need for healer there and what’s more they are more an annoying time gate than a challenge.

Look at Hodgins in AC P1 or Zojja in CoE Story. How is it fun?

The greatest thing about GW2 combat is that you don’t need static healer on your back casting blue shiny spells to keep you alive. I don’t understand why having such old, boring, stale ideas would be better for this game?

tramwajarz.2369:

The greatest thing about GW2 combat is that you don’t need static healer on your back casting blue shiny spells to keep you alive. I don’t understand why having such old, boring, stale ideas would be better for this game?

I agree that it is great that in GW2 you do not need to have a healer in the group. However, it should still be just as rewarding to play a healing and supportive role, if that is what you prefer to do. I don’t think anyone here is asking for there to be healing in the traditional trinity sense, at least I am not asking for that. I am glad Anet done away with the hard trinity. But it would be nice to have more of a benefit to having them. I’m not saying they should be vital, but there should be events that would go smoother with supportive players in the group. And supportive characters should be rewarded just as much for their efforts as zerkers are for their damage.

At the moment the open world can be conquered by zerkers, and that does nothing to encourage build diversity. Hopefully HoT will offer some solutions to this issue.

I agree that healing could use a revamp (not a buff, but a change in how it scales, and is used) to make it more useful. However, I don’t believe that it should be done at the cost of the meta.

I like the idea of having outgoing healing and defensive boons contribute to events, and thus be rewarding. However, that enourages even more AFK mode that there already is. If I can spam my shouts as a warrior (with a shout heal build) and still contribute to the event, why would I want to attack? I will be rewarded the same. Also, if more people are just using healing and boons to contribute, the event has a greater chance of failing, which means there needs to be more outgoing damage. So why would I just use my AoE healing, and boons if it meant that the event had a greater chance of failing? Might as well jump into the frey and start attacking instead so the event doesn’t fail. Then you are back in the same boat, where it is much more efficient to deal as much damage as possible than it is to support.

As much as I would love to see healing builds get some more love, I just don’t see any way it can be done.

There is no healer role in GW2. If you want to support, there is a lot to play with your buffs, cleanses and other abilities not connected do dps.

Sometimes I wonder if ppl crying about lack of support “role” in this game do even read skill descriptions.

Open world can be conquered with every build. This is the most you can do with build diversity. Zerkers are the fastest but not the easiest. I’ve seen dungeon bosses facetanked with cleric guardians with 0 dodges. It was slow as hell. Hard? Don’t think so.

You can change stats, events, battles, whatever. There will always be meta. It’s for ppl who like doing things efficient and have minimum skill to execute their approach to the game. No one is forcing you to play said build. If you want to play full tank or full healing power it’s your choice not mine.

Or people could just learn the game and stop trying to go full support… You should be getting equal rewards for events if you’re doing an equal amount of fighting. Is this not the case?

Nobody was “crying full support” here, really.
People fail to read.
All which was suggested was slight revamps to event tagging and/or HP stat (including the ability to crit with different modifier) or both in a way that people who do not like to hurr durr pew pew only can feel as rewarded as the Raz Smash kind of a player, with the fact it’d encourage a bit more of diversity than there’s at the time. Including a dozen of new hybrid builds too.

When events are made to kill x mobs or gather x loot rewarding for healing makes no sense to me.

For events with escort much more useful is using swiftness than healing npc which heals itself once he’s out of combat.

Can’t you see this game is for self healing and more active defense/support? This should be rewarded, not passive healing.

Rin.1046:

[…]
Healing builds do work, and they do help your team, but they simply aren’t rewarding enough and in the open work or speed run meta, they simply aren’t needed. So it wouldn’t matter how much you buffed healing, if a full team of zerkers can do anything faster and for better rewards, what is the point in going support?[…]

Rin.1046:

[…]And supportive characters should be rewarded just as much for their efforts as zerkers are for their damage.

At the moment the open world can be conquered by zerkers, and that does nothing to encourage build diversity. Hopefully HoT will offer some solutions to this issue.

I think you fell to some common missconceptions about gw2 combat.
a) Zerker is not a build, it’s a stat combination. Nothing more, nothing less.
b) There’s already quite a lot of support in the game, buffing allies with boons (might, fury, aegis, protection, quickness, etc.) handling defiance stacks on bosses, wise usage of blinds and reflects- this are all supportive tasks, yet you don’t need any specific gear to use them. Support evolves from trait choices, utility skills and group composition. So if you want to play a “support” role, you already can do that. The only thing that is usually excluded is traditional healing.
In fact, the demonised zerker-meta aka root of all evil (intentional exageration) includes quite a lot support, shared among all party members, unfortunatly quite a lot of people refuse to accept it and rather beat the dead “omg all they do is stack and press 1” horse.

Even though there’s still a lot room for optimization regarding combat and rewards, I don’t see much sense in OPs suggestion.

Healing Power work perfectly. It’s not the fastest way, but the easiest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yxE5ED2wPo

They are only 3, one of them is a healing guardian and they are still able to do fractal in a decent time. The run was just easier with an cleric guardian.

Thanks for sharing this, now I don’t have to go search for it

Some things:

1. There are no dedicated roles in GW2. Instead, there are professions, each with distinct advantages and disadvantages, and with somewhat dissimilar play-styles. I’m not a fan of returning to dedicated roles.
2. I think it would be a good idea if any contribution to events counted towards event credit. In other words, I’m for rewarding active play (player did stuff) rather than passive (player is there). Drop credit, I’m not so sure about. At least some of the support options also do damage (e.g., Symbol of Protection also damages), and others require very little time, which means they can be used, and the player can also then attack. Healing others is only a part of what the GW2 professions can offer to those on their side. I don’t know that rewarding someone for ignoring a large part of what their professions can do is warranted. We already see many complaints about that as it is (e.g, AFK getting event credit and rewards, or the “press 1, then kite around a little.” play-style).
3. I don’t believe an across-the-board buff to the HP stat is warranted. Some healing abilities are already quite strong. What might be warranted is to buff the coefficients on some skills that provide healing. In fact, ANet has done this in several balance passes. These buffs should be relatively minor, even if these means a later, also minor, buff is needed. In any case, this should be considered on a case-by-case basis, not an overall buff.

The problem with healing others as a “traditional healer” is that in Guild Wars 2 that is not necessary. There’s no point.

Each player has his own tools to stay alive – he has his own heal skill. He has dodges, evades blinds, blocks and reflects.

People should stop trying to fill a role that’s not necessary. The game itself was built around the idea that there should be no person dedicated to healing others.

Harper.4173:

The problem with healing others as a “traditional healer” is that in Guild Wars 2 that is not necessary. There’s no point.

Each player has his own tools to stay alive – he has his own heal skill. He has dodges, evades blinds, blocks and reflects.

People should stop trying to fill a role that’s not necessary. The game itself was built around the idea that there should be no person dedicated to healing others.

Um Abbas.5693:

Nobody was “crying full support” here, really.
People fail to read.

I assume you’re talking about yourself, since a careful read of the OP will show the purpose of the post is to suggest changes that will help people who try to run full support rather than fighting normally and getting full credit. That, or to just talk about healing without making any points or posing any real questions.

Couple notes.

fuzdragonwind.7219:

However, event and combat credit for those that try to stay off to the side flinging support (healing, buffs, and non damage related effects) grow disappointed that they do not get that participation check, or if they do, its not frequent enough to be noticed. This is 50% hearsay, 50% myself.

Healing power is as effective/rewarding as it is for a reason. Namely to prevent this:

laokoko.7403:

I’m pretty much afk auto attacking Grenth while piles of corpse lies around me.

To accomplish that, This is a thing:

Each player who participates in killing a monster will have the opportunity to loot the body. Each monster has a damage table and a threshold value of damage done to it by the player before it will give full credit for the kill. This value is about 5% to 10% of the monster’s health.³ The loot dropped is unique to the player, and loot received by one player does not affect what another player receives. One monster may drop the same rare item for multiple players.

I understand that this is a suggestion thread to make healing more viable, but to those looking to reason that tank/support builds are favorable in dungeons, please realize that you are sacrificing dps (and other player’s time) to top up their health and passive defense that they do not need (if good zerker, obviously bad ones exist). Therein lies lots of the frustration.

I’d be ticked off if playing an RPG and my mage party member healed me for trivial amounts when they could be helping me chip away at boss health.

Thaddeus.4891:

Healing Power work perfectly. It’s not the fastest way, but the easiest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yxE5ED2wPo

I think that’s precisely why it is silly. It doesn’t matter how many dodges a person miss, or walking a red circle. You just don’t die.

I wear cleric/nomad gear on Mai Trin myself. And I have to say it is really silly. My reasoning is it doesn’t matter, since I almost do pug exclusively. And most of the time I spend 2-3 minutes just to take out the buff from Mai.

And even though I use berserker every where else. I some times take the easy way out and spec in force of will. That turns my hp from 11k to 18k. So when I make a mistake, and miss a dodge or block… I’m still at 9k-11k health. Which is the amount of health a max dps guardian have…

My point is it trivialize many interesting encounter. I don’t think that’s how the game is supposed to be played. Like, simply placing a few point into vitality traits, I can play badly and walk out fine.

Na it don’t Trivialsze anything , healing power is somthing that helps you relax and notice thing you never noticed before, because your glued to your keyboard trying to avoid every bullet aimed at your head just so you can get a Rare.

if everyone in this game just got 150-400 healing power , yes sure events would be a little but slower but people would have a higher uptime of damage , i’ve seen events like the World bosses dead with 9mins remaining ect because everyone is damage,damage,damage , so taking some healing power doesn’t change a thing but adding in a extra 3mins.

you caqn play good or bad how ever much you like , thats why there is these players that go WvW with full tank gear and 800 in healing power they do easly wreak 3-5 players at a time and the build set up allows them to fight forever untill they make mistakes , thats one thing i;ve learned from this take dps stats meta jive is that you’ll only survive so long as you can avoid the attacks and HoT is going to bring more of that so you can dodge as much as you’d like and call it I play good healing power will become a more important stat in the future.

you’ll just have to wait that little longer.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Na it don’t Trivialsze anything , healing power is somthing that helps you relax and notice thing you never noticed before, because your glued to your keyboard trying to avoid every bullet aimed at your head just so you can get a Rare.

if everyone in this game just got 150-400 healing power , yes sure events would be a little but slower but people would have a higher uptime of damage , i’ve seen events like the World bosses dead with 9mins remaining ect because everyone is damage,damage,damage , so taking some healing power doesn’t change a thing but adding in a extra 3mins.

you caqn play good or bad how ever much you like , thats why there is these players that go WvW with full tank gear and 800 in healing power they do easly wreak 3-5 players at a time and the build set up allows them to fight forever untill they make mistakes , thats one thing i;ve learned from this take dps stats meta jive is that you’ll only survive so long as you can avoid the attacks and HoT is going to bring more of that so you can dodge as much as you’d like and call it I play good healing power will become a more important stat in the future.

you’ll just have to wait that little longer.

there’s nothing wrong with playing relaxed, with buffed vit or hp, however relaxed playstyle should be slower (less rewarding) than hardcore playstyle.

Asking to change the game so others NEED your support is not realistic in the least…..

Brother Grimm.5176:

Asking to change the game so others NEED your support is not realistic in the least…..

I don’t think anyone here asked for that. At least I for one do not want to need a healer/support. What I would like to see is the ability to have a healer but not need one. At this point if you are running mostly heals you are mostly useless. I am simply wanting it to be useful but not required. I cant think of a single example in game where a support (hammer guard with perma protection for example) is needed. Not a single one. Where as I can think of a ton of places where it is very useful to a group.

Being useful is not the same as being required. All we are asking for is just to be useful (if we feel so inclined to play that role) not to change the game into a trinity.

Healing others is only ever going to be useful if it’s needed. Buffing the amounts healed by some trivial (or even non-trivial) amount will make no difference. If a group does not need the current “lesser” healing amount, then a greater “healing” amount would be no different.

tramwajarz.2369:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Na it don’t Trivialsze anything , healing power is somthing that helps you relax and notice thing you never noticed before, because your glued to your keyboard trying to avoid every bullet aimed at your head just so you can get a Rare.

if everyone in this game just got 150-400 healing power , yes sure events would be a little but slower but people would have a higher uptime of damage , i’ve seen events like the World bosses dead with 9mins remaining ect because everyone is damage,damage,damage , so taking some healing power doesn’t change a thing but adding in a extra 3mins.

you caqn play good or bad how ever much you like , thats why there is these players that go WvW with full tank gear and 800 in healing power they do easly wreak 3-5 players at a time and the build set up allows them to fight forever untill they make mistakes , thats one thing i;ve learned from this take dps stats meta jive is that you’ll only survive so long as you can avoid the attacks and HoT is going to bring more of that so you can dodge as much as you’d like and call it I play good healing power will become a more important stat in the future.

you’ll just have to wait that little longer.

there’s nothing wrong with playing relaxed, with buffed vit or hp, however relaxed playstyle should be slower (less rewarding) than hardcore playstyle.

If you want a hardcore play style ask Anet for a Hardcore Mode for dungeons just as they did in gw1 for the More experianced crowd looking for more challenging content but i’d think fractals was ment to cover that , though they could take that idea and make hardcore dungeons.

the open world should not be subject to Hardcore playing its a open world not a Game mode that requires Stat min/maxing , getting healing power to a point where it is useful , but not needed would be the perfect balance but as of right now the Enviroment in game does not require any form of healing power you can even get away without even using your 6 heal, where dodges and evades are enough to keep you alive because guess what PvE creatures don’t deal enough conditions.

now people have pretty much abbandoned the Toxic alliance events they have gone back to running 0 healing power , where in those events you needed some form of Reliable healing sources be it you or other player .

you could say running 0 healing power does not extend your core Life duration so you’ll have x amount of time before you’ll go down , increasing the requirement for some healing power will only benifit the game and allows more windows for contructive content that needs Healing power , Or ( extended life ) to survive a situation .

bit like the Wyvern in the HoT beta you get cornered by burning ground and you must pass through the flames quickly (while you only have 20% hp left) yes you could double dodge over it only to be downed by the next flaming breath attack as he swoops , or you could have healing power rather than 0 have 150-400 or 800 – or 1500 it gives you the chance to tacticly use the correct ability to gain regen? , or heal a chunck of hp to deal with the brunt of the on comming attack to Prevent death rather than take the hit and heal after .

with healing power with this 0 stat whats the point going on , means you can’t recover with one heal from 20% vs that newer content and then you’d have to risk death to survive a bit counter intuitive of healing is it not , all because no one took healing power as a stat .

at the stats core 0 healing power is enough for you and one charater alone , but fighting the new content in HoT , it was much more effective to have some healing stat rather than 0 to buy you time against those unpredictable unprecedented events or creatures.

all i can think of is this is new content in its entireity with much more depth that that of silverwastes and complexitiy that you’ll need to think of more than just your own survival because at times Anet did say you’ll need skills to beat certain creatures or events by learning the lanuages of other races in the jungle to gain said skills.

You’ll need or “MAKE THE CHOICE” To have some healing power to survive while running between waypoints , i’ll tell you this by god there are waypoints but there are lots of obstacles blocking your route and gliders you’ll have to plan your landing , you’ll never know where to land and or if you can land safely then escape.

please read the " make the choice"

again anet did say if you’ve got swiftness you can only just escape the dinos in the boarderlands (if your built for mobility you can outrun them) so i’d expect the same type of creatures in the PvE of HoT.

so yes the healing stat will become more important , just not right now.

Wooden addressed this pretty neatly:

if full healing/protecting build is put in, all professions would need some form of it. otherwise, those without it would be left out of teams in a team composition.

People hated babysitting npcs in gw1

Togo, rurik.. I suspect some of the slang names I. Know of would get me infracted.

Something that’s being missed by some is the idea that: you can do damage and heal on the same build. In varying proportions. You can still get gold event credit trying to heal people. Which is something I love about gw2. No pigeon holing into one role?

Harper.4173:

The problem with healing others as a “traditional healer” is that in Guild Wars 2 that is not necessary. There’s no point.

Each player has his own tools to stay alive – he has his own heal skill. He has dodges, evades blinds, blocks and reflects.

People should stop trying to fill a role that’s not necessary. The game itself was built around the idea that there should be no person dedicated to healing others.

You are correct in that it is not necessary as it should not be. HOWEVER, the preference is that even if you were to build as one, it would bring admirable things to the table. AKA a nice to have.

Its not necessary to bring reflects for the grawl shaman to kill him either for example but it provides excellent opportunity to facilitate damage and people love it when a guardian runs projectile denial. Building a healer should do just that, allow admirable capability to facilitate the completion of the objective within a group setting when played at high level(and the requirement of high skill in order to be used effectively), not mandatory to build as one, but its very nice to have if someone chooses to be one as it should be just like using Trinity in Warframe or running Medics in a team based shooter. Not mandatory but still very powerful.

Granted the “Healer” builds of GW2’s PvE is already here and just below that mark of efficiency(I’ve seen High Healing: Battle Presence, Phantasmal Support, Earth/Water AB, and Shout Support pull crazy cheese modes in FotM 50 with crazy clear speed, but my voice alone isn’t enough), our current situation right now is that the general populace is not well aware of these options available to them, which is why many of your zerker meta colleagues are constantly bashing your heads against the wall over trivial affairs and moot discussion which goes no where.

It also doesn’t help that it is constantly detoured by your very colleagues, a contributing factor to why these threads keep popping out and why the vicious cycle of bile continues(something most of you don’t enjoy, I personally love the suffering that many of you zerker meta endure when having to post in these threads which is why I have yet to let up on these topics). Many people assume you “can’t” be a healer (as in its physically impossible as the game itself directly hinders it) when reality it is very VERY possible but its just antagonized by many.

@IllegalChocolate

True but Its less that it is unknown as links to videos that show healers are posted in most of the threads like these, and more that they want “zerker” gone.

*Never have I seen a person actually reply or acknowledge a video showing healers. *

No one has acknowledged it in this thread either. Well no one who doesnt already know they exist and are viable.

Um Abbas.5693:

I would love it. As someone who stubbornly runs cleric with bit of soldier’s Necro with Dwayna runes, apothecary Engineer, buff machine Guard and somehow trying to figure out water attunement on my new Ele, (although I love the Necro to bits, just want a small break), I am pretty rare sight… I don’t have problems tagging though (Necro staff is good when I cannot simply d/f), and truly, as pointed up above, i often stand among a pile of corpses wondering what just happened

yeh. but let’s be more honest and admit that zerk vs rabid/soldier/etc is like a sharp vs dull knife. if you don’t know how to use it, it doesn’t really matter whether or not it’s sharp. i can understand why people run more defensive builds (i used them too before i learned each fight, and i still use them in PvP) i honestly enjoy zerker, not because i’m so busy and important and needa finish fast cause i have places to be.. but because of the high risk/high reward aspect- once you learn each encounter in PvE, it doesn’t make much of a difference to you anyways. when we wipe, it’s not because we needed 2000 extra toughness, but because a pull was messed up/someone gave defiance/no blinds/no reflects/someone got revealed/ etc etc. even then, it’s rare at this point. as long as you play the way that lets you enjoy the game the most and let others do the same, you’re doing it right. and please, before you make the habit of joining zerk only groups in defensive gear, understand that no one forced you to. you saw the post (or should have) and chose to ignore it. this means you really don’t have a legitimate right to complain if you were kicked or they insulted your play style. try to learn the meta tactics for each encounter. chances are, there are plenty of ways to complete them without relying on toughness/vitality/healing power.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

You are correct in that it is not necessary as it should not be. HOWEVER, the preference is that even if you were to build as one, it would bring admirable things to the table. AKA a nice to have.

Still waiting for someone to tell me how to make groups want healers if the heals are not necessary. Expect I’ll be waiting longer, because you can’t. If you’re talking people being happy when someone drops a heal, well, you can have that now — with the right people.

Ergo, the issue should be, “Is the Healing Power stat too weak with skill X.” not, “Buff HP because it’s weak and this will make someone who wants to heal wanted in Pug meta groups.”

Does healing power affect regen? If not, why not?

laokoko.7403:

The problem is speed run is pretty much the standard today. If you can’t clear the dungeon in full berserker max dps build, you get frowned on.

And for all the right reasons, because when the whole party plays full berserker/assassins and works well together, you absolutely do -not- need any extra toughness, vitality or healing power. This is because almost all damage from mobs can be avoided through active defenses that don’t rely on toughness/vitality/healingpower. In a full DPS team the boss will get bursted down so fast that during the brief encounter 90% of all his damage can be avoided through blocks, blinds, reflects, weakness and protection, making toughness/vitality/healingpower absolutely redundant and making builds that focus on those stats rather than DPS stats a burden to the team rather than an asset to the team.

Don’t blame the players for the Berserker speedrun meta, blame Anet for designing the game in such a way that would inevitably lead to a DPS-oriented meta.

well things gotten heated in here… guess i’ll list the builds i play and connect the dots. mind you, this will be obtuse and biased and also very limited in most cases as far as i’m presently aware.

warrior: in most regards i am uncomfortable with warrior as most of what it can do is just “kill it”. heal shouts were NOT appealing as the recharge is not fluid enough and i fall back to just dps’ing. i enjoyed banner support but it leaves me with a lack of things to do at the same time. regen and the slight stat boosts are barely noticeable in a serious event but they work out for general use to reasonably nice degree. lately i have most fun as a GS warrior that gives might to allies, which by itself is only half a build so other than pushing my crit values, i’m left scratching my head.

guardian: guardians are wonderful but are almost opposite of warriors in what they can do (for me). i can’t really get into the projectile reflection side of things (i can’t tell whats slow: me, connection, skills). buffing allies and its passive healing works wonders in general play and buffs work even into large situations. aegis feels like it could use two more methods of application, but otherwise its more of a bonus than something dedicated. which brings me to traits, while warrior traits were mostly “pump out more”, guardian’s were “lets DO more things” which is everything i could ask for (that its aiming for doing more, not that it does everything).

ranger: i want to love this class, i really do and i enjoy it so much while i was building it up, playing honestly. but i did NOT know how to play gw2 as i done so. spirits, have thier own topic somewhere and boiled down to only ice being “useful”, so that cut that form of support off of me. i tried traps, nope there’s stacking limits, but hey nothing touches me while solo (killing a champ lol). then there’s “melee or not” which is still up for debate. longbow? yes. sword? no, why when axe does nicer but no might given to pet. gs? well i’m looking into it recently but haven’t tried anything, hated it on game launch though.

mesmer, i struggled to play this when i was learning the game, and i still can’t shatter “correctly”. thankfully phantasms is a thing, as well as explosive clones (when they get killed or when they get replaced). phantasms, specifically the torch one, has been my everything: giving people regen, applying thier counter related effects (confusion and retaliation) AND removing conditions. now illusions they’re stupidly fragile if i face just a vet or higher, but i don’t run into issues until there’s a second or i’m in “serious” content because i can just make more. then before scepter gotten a reason to be used, mantra of pain was set for autocast, and there’s a trait for healing. i could never die solo and i was in “rare” armor with healing power second stat, giver weapons, and giver accessories. now i’m half condition damage half flat damage crit evenly between armor and accessories. life is wonderful in every situation now.

elementalist: i’ve been playing this less and less. it feels like i’m not being good unless i’m fire staff. i have some joke builds like giving everyone around me constant fury, swiftness, and protection. water staff is only healing viable and it falls short in a lot of things, much easier to just fire+earth to dps roll on things and thats boring. if it try to run something else, i just die because eles are twigs.

cont because limits…

engineer: not much to say here, experimental turrets are nice but they matter so little in serious play and thats not factoring in thier fragility. damage and freedom of things to do is nicely spread around. only the elixer gun is feeling clumsy. support roles though? whats that =p [sarcasm] potions are disappointing towards others, medkit is a joke, and most other things are situational. now i’m not saying eng sucks, its actually wonderful, i just can’t be a support as my tiny brain can’t wrap around what it can do to be one effectively.

necromancer: this one feels like he’s in a stalemate right now… i LOVE fear build like… triple duration fear, or rather it was triple duration till a related trait stopped working. now he tried raw damage, ok that worked 3k damage average per hit was nice but snoreville. i tried minions, nope they die, but its pretty funny when traited with vamp. i tried being tanky, well that almost works but there’s not enough movement going on. my favorite skill, vamp signet (the button 6 one), every use of it makes a champion’s hp bar drop 5%.

thief: this is my black sheep, i stay away from it because of my zealous friends. that said, i ran crit self heal, almost worked, i must just suck though. i tried venoms, OMG BEST THING EVER NO SARCASM, like holy kitten sorry but everything yes with giving people might, extra conditions, and live stealing. o.o if only they weren’t so limited to just that, like they don’t stack for one thing.

sorry for wall of text >.>
playing support is indeed passive even in an active game, hell my mesmer afks the hardest. necro afks only because staves recharge is kinda lol. guardian auto attacks hammer and just wins in parties (jokingly and not). then ranger is just “use volley sometimes, unless in zerg, then always else you miss out”. warrior has similar AoE “issues” but i think thats more so on reaction time instead.

healing was only ever “almost working” as guardian via regen and virtue then random stuff, ele via water staff and related, mesmer mantra and phant, and finally everyone else falling in line. rangers is just healing spring, thats it. thiefs are the venoms but thats offensive instead of… whatever. then warrior is ONLY banners as shouts aren’t frequent enough. out of them all, only guardian, mesmer, and ranger manage to “do” anything as they spread things out. why not thief? because its only venoms and if allies don’t do anything, then everything is a “nope”